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Charles Nicholson (1795-1837)

A
native of Liverpool, Nicholson made a career in London
from the second decade of the 19th century. He became
first flutist of the principal theater orchestras and
of the prestigious Philharmonic Society Concerts, where
he appeared regularly as a soloist from 1816-36. He
also traveled all over Britain (though not, it appears,
to the Continent), gave lessons, and wrote tutors for
the flute that were reprinted and revised throughout
the 19th century.

Nicholson played on a flute by George Astor (fl
c1778-c1831) that his father, also a renowned
flutist, had modified by enlarging the embouchure and
toneholes. It is usually incorrectly stated that the
younger Nicholson made these changes himself, and some
people have claimed that they were meant to 'improve'
the flute's intonation. In fact, he specified the reasons
as follows:
1) they made the flute's tone more powerful and still
capable of delicacy,
2) they permitted the accustomed fingerings to be used
in the third octave,
3) they made glides ( a fashionable kind of glissando),
more effectively, and
4) the 'vibration', another fashionable ornament, a
vibrato produced by the finger, was clearer because
of the flute's clearer tone.

Once his highly individual playing style had become
popular in London and his special flute had attracted
notice, Nicholson licensed his name for use by several
London flute makers, who marked their instruments 'Nicholson's
Improved'. These flutes were built to favor flat keys
such as E flat, A flat, and F and C minor. Nicholson's
famous variations on 'Roslin Castle', in F minor (1836),
are an example of the 'National Melodies' in the Adagio
style in which he excelled. Though some continental
critics thought both music and performance style were
in bad taste, they remained prominent features of English
flute-playing into the recording era (after 1890).

Today Nicholson is rememberred less for the special
quality of his own personal style of music-making than
for the fact that Theobald Boehm, on a visit to London
in 1831, was impressed enough with his powerful tone
that he felt he needed to build a new flute. The immediate
result was Boehm's
model of 1831, which provided the earliest recognizable
acoustical model for the modern flute.